You would be forgiven for avoiding any pandemic-set novels for the rest of the decade, but it's worth making an exception for Elizabeth Strout's Lucy By The Sea Vogue, Best New Books for Autumn

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout review – lockdown

There is also repetition in theme, across a variety of characters: poverty, loss, loneliness, food issues, infidelity, and the vitality of nature, the value of connection, which is at the heart of Strout’s writing. Could you understand Lucy's ambivalence to leaving New York City? How did you process the early days of the pandemic? An unflinching depiction of the ways we are all alone . . . Strout's most distinctive skill - the ability to render every character, big or small, with precision - is on full display . . . Lucy finds love oin the novel, but Strout never looks away from the loneliness that is inherent in being human: "We all live with people - and places - and things that we have given great weight to. But we are all weightless in the end." Sarah Collins, Prospect Lucy by the Sea makes the pandemic personal. Collective grief for the pandemic’s toll brushes against more private tragedies: infidelity, miscarriage, impotence, widowhood. The novel is about the difficulty of feeling like a person during a global pandemic—indeed, the difficulty of feeling anything at all. A “dazed,” “fuzzy” Lucy looks away while William watches the evening news. Concerned that “my mind was not quite right,” she confesses: “I could not read. I could not concentrate.” While in earlier novels Lucy’s defining characteristic is her willingness to plumb her own depths, here Lucy loses faith in the value of self-knowledge through storytelling. “About my work I thought: I will never write another word again,” she says. As if crushed by the weight of a moment that promises to be historic, Lucy questions how—and whether—to relate the particular to the general. Strout captures the minutiae of recent years with insight and compassion iNews, 40 Best Books to Read This AutumnDiscuss Lucy's relationship with her ex-husband, William. Why do you think they have remained in each other's lives for so long? Were you satisfied with how they ended up? Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love.

Lucy by the Sea - Penguin Books UK

Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over. Lucy by the Sea holds a mirror up to everything we have been through recently. Not only reflecting disbelief, isolation and how different and at the same time similar we are to each other, but also what happens to human relationships when we can't be together. Superb Claire Fuller, author of Unsettled Ground Discuss Lucy's relationship with her ex-husband, William. Why do you think they have remained in each other's lives for so long? Were you satisfied with how they ended up at the end of the novel, or were you wary, like their daughters? Please explain. I really did understand. In the start of things, we knew it was bad, and I had found the story about the small Italian town that was completely decimated by it early on. But what we didn't know was 'how long will this go on"? ... - pnelson384 Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?A really fun bonus: Characters from other Strout novels make appearances big and small, including Bob Burgess from "The Burgess Boys" and Olive Kitteridge from the "Olive Kitteridge" and "Olive, Again." While you can totally appreciate "Lucy by the Sea" as a standalone book without having read any of the others before it (it is fourth in the "Lucy Barton" series), it's a much richer experience if you know what comes previously. Strout managed to make me love this strange woman I’d never met, who I knew nothing about. What a terrific writer she is.” —Zadie Smith MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window) Lucy by the Sea has an anecdotal surface that belies a firm underlying structure. It is meant to feel like life—random, surprising, occasionally lit with flashes of larger meaning—but it is art.” — The New Yorker Most of all – because it’s no spoiler to say that this is a love story – he is simply incapable of being anything but generous to her, even if it’s a generosity that Lucy finds herself unable to accept without “a shiver of foreboding”. He admits: “Yours is the life I wanted to save,” when explaining why he took her out of New York. “We all live with people – and places – and things – that we have given great weight to,” Lucy thinks. “But we are all weightless, in the end.” Maybe so, but I’m not sure I’ve ever read a novel that better explains why that, probably, is enough.